Submillimetre surveys have discovered a population of luminous, high-redshift, dusty starburst galaxies, which go through a phase of very rapid star formation, resulting in approximately equal extragalactic optical and far infrared backgrounds (FIRB). Devlin et al. report an extragalactic survey at 250, 350 and 500 µm; they determine that all of the FIRB comes from individual galaxies, with galaxies at redshift z ≥ 1.2 accounting for 70 per cent of it.
- Mark J. Devlin
- Peter A. R. Ade
- Donald V. Wiebe
